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POLITICO 44

The Dow Jones is up, the employment picture is brightening, and we’ve had several quarters of economic growth. So the recession is over, right?

Not so fast.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the entity that officially calls the beginning and end of recessions, met April 18 in Cambridge, Mass., and concluded ... that it’s too early to tell whether the recession that began in December 2007 is over.

The committee said it had reviewed “the most recent data for all indicators” to help pinpoint a date for a “trough” in economic activity — the point at which things stop going down and start going up.

“Although most indicators have turned up, the committee decided that the determination of the trough date on the basis of current data would be premature,” the committee said in a release.

“Many indicators are quite preliminary at this time and will be revised in coming months,” it said.

The committee said it was hamstrung because it can’t rely on forecasts — which are largely positive — but only on current data, which aren’t so good.

Any declaration of a trough in economic activity would have political implications by offering the Obama administration the verdict of a neutral observer that things are finally starting to get better. Republicans have sought to lay the blame for the sour economy on Obama’s doorstep, and White House officials are eager for indicators that could demonstrate that their policies are working.

Wall Street POLITICO is a weekly column looking at issues that drive business.

Readers' Comments (1)

Personal income dropped 3.2% last year. With Energy costs and higher taxes promising to leave indebted consumers with even less disposable income, and overt government hostilty to private enterprise and small business, there's no real reason to believe that we're not seeing anything other than misleading indicators and a false recovery.